Glue guns have been utilized for dispensing hot melt glues, typically using glue sticks which are in a solid state at room temperatures. The hot melt glue sticks are heated to a liquid state, in which they will flow for dispensing. Prior art hot melt glue dispensers include glue gun systems with removable cartridges set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,664,701, issued to Massena on Sep. 9, 1997. The glue gun system set forth in the Massena patent includes a removable cartridge which is removably disposed within a hot glue dispenser gun. Also set forth is a warming stand for maintaining the removable cartridges and the hot melt glue disposed in the glue cartridges at operating temperatures so that one of several of the glue cartridges disposed on the warming stand may be selected for removably disposing within the barrel of the glue gun.
This type system had several problems which primarily related to the safety of the device. The electrical contacts for electrically connecting the removable cartridges to the warming stands were exposed such that a user could be injured by touching electrical contacts. The hot surfaces of the removable heating cartridges were also exposed such that users could easily burn themselves. Additionally, the removable cartridges were not secured in the warming stand, but merely rested upon open surfaces of the warming stand. If the warming stand were jostled, the glue cartridges could be easily disturbed from their selected resting positions upon the warming stand.